Follow Me Out of Debt | Get out of debt and get into prosperity!

It's important to not only complete a monthly budget, but it's also important to maintain that budget on a weekly basis. Revisiting the budget weekly allows us the opportunity to make sure that everything is in line and where it's supposed to be, especially making sure that we're not forgetting any budget line items in a given month. This is something that can take us by surprise, but if we're set...

Should you keep a credit card for travel purposes? Some folks believe so, and I do agree with some of the valid points offered with doing so. First of all, the fraud protection and ease of disputing a charge is quite easy with a credit card. This is a big deal to me.   If you travel often for work and are reimbursed for expenses, using a credit card is an easy way to keep your expenses for work an...

Should you get a pet while you're in the process of getting out of debt? Some folks who are currently in the middle of working through their get-out-of-debt plan realize at some point that they long for companionship in the form of a pet. They may feel guilty about purchasing a pet because they know that the pet will be an ongoing expense that may go in the opposite direction of the goals that are...

Just a quick personal update on me, the show, and more.   Do you have a question that you would like to have answered on the show or via e-mail? Go to http://followmeoutofdebt.com/contact  to send your question today.   For faster response, feel free to message me directly on Facebook at: http://facebook.com/followmeoutofdebt     If you know someone who may benefit from this show, please feel free...

Do you remember that infomercial from back in the day where the lady yelled out tell everyone to stop the insanity? It was an infomercial on diet and exercise, but that's not the topic of this episode. Rather, I am talking about how we need to stop the insanity when it comes to all of the ideas and concepts floating around in the world of personal financial advice. It can get to be pretty overwhel...

Is it really necessary to eat rice and beans when getting out of debt? Absolutely not. Several gurus out there use the phrase of rice and beans when referring to grocery shopping, but this is to illustrate the point that you are no longer to be eating steak, lobster, and other expensive foods while you're getting out of debt. You aren't to be eating out at restaurants, either. The meaning behind t...

You ask the questions on social media about personal finance, and I answer them right here on the show.   Ashley and her husband are having issues in their marriage. They have tried paying off debt for the last four years but have little to show for it. Her husband is never home, and it's affecting their marriage. She wants him home more often so that he has more time with the kids. They are stres...

A friend in need is a friend, and you want them to stay that way. Letting them borrow money from you is a good way to almost guarantee that won't happen if your friend doesn't pay you back. Granted, if your friend borrows a smaller amount, you could just call it a gift and that's that. However, if your friend (or family member) borrows a substantial amount of money from you, what recourse do you h...

On episode 159, I introduced the work from home opportunity known as Rev.com. The primary benefits of this program are paid training, consistent pay when you work, and a truly flexible schedule. If you have great grammar and typing skills, Rev.com may be a great fit for you.   The first segment of the Rev.com opportunity is transcription, but they also offer captioning as a second segment. I appli...

Yes, you can actually choose to be happy. While we are affected by external influences, we do have a choice as to how we respond to those influences. If you're having a bad day, you have the choice of whether or not you should take out your feelings about your day when you get home on your spouse and children. If you let it get the best of you, you may be short with family members, when at most ti...

Silly adult, gifts are for kids. Well, not all of the time, but in most cases.   Picture the holiday shopping season. How many times have you found yourself actually dreading that time of the year because you are anticipating the cost, stress, and gift returns? I don't get why people do this to themselves. The easy answer is to stop trading gifts with other adults in the family. Make the holidays...

Have you ever had a temporary defeat? This is actually a good thing. Our temporary defeats and setbacks don't define whether we are winning or losing. Instead, these setbacks are helping to teach us a lesson, as long as we are willing to learn from the experience.   The next time you come across a roadblock or other temporary defeat, you should write down what went wrong, reflect on that, and figu...

Before you buy a beater vehicle to get out of your car payment, you may want to consider all of the possibilities. It's exciting to imagine getting out of car payments by driving a beater vehicle that was paid for with cash. However, how much will maintenance and repairs cost for said vehicle? What is the true cost of driving around in a beater vehicle?   Especially in situations where you have a...

Credit scores are still important. Many folks associate a credit score as a means to be able to get credit, but a credit score is used for much more than just approval of a credit line or loan. Certain employers may use your credit score as a determining factor of your employment. You'll need a healthy score for favorable interest rates on loans, including mortgages. Renting will be much easier an...

This is a follow-up to the Pomodoro Technique introduced on episode 176. You may want to listen to that episode first if you haven't already.   Find out how the Pomodoro Technique has been working for me.   If you know someone who may benefit from this show, please feel free to share it by sending them to  http://followmeoutofdebt.com . If you're on Twitter, follow me at @fmoodpodcast for all of t...

Self-sabotage is a sad reason to fail. You simply cannot be your own worst enemy when it comes to your get-out-of-debt plans. If you continue to use credit cards or take out new loans, you are going directly against what you had set out to do to begin with: to get out of debt and get into prosperity.   Nobody's perfect, and I get that. However, in the end, if you sabotage your own efforts, you hav...

Is it a hard and fast rule to wait until you're out of debt before you invest? Intuitively, it does make sense to only focus our resources towards paying off our debt as quickly as possible. What happens if getting out of debt takes much longer than what we had originally anticipated? We may be passing on some investment opportunities because we are putting all of this off until we're out of debt...

Is debt good or bad? It's a question that many of us ask ourselves while we are in the process of getting out of debt. Good debt is usually considered to be mortgages or other debt products that have to do with investments or assets. Bad debt it typically associated with consumerism, such as credit cards, car loans, and personal loans.   I think it goes beyond that, though. I think we need to base...

Here's the question of the day. Is there anything in your life, knowing what you know now, that you would not do again today if you had the opportunity to do it all over again?   It's a question that allows us to reflect and realize the errors that we've made. It helps us to reinforce the reasons why we don't want to make the same mistakes again, even if we are currently in the middle of working t...

What are your biggest concerns right now? What keeps you up at night? What is on your mind more than anything else during any given day?   You could have several concerns, but it's good to narrow it down to a few or even less than a few to keep things more focused on what's truly important. Once you've identified what's concerning you, you'll realize what the most critical issues are at the moment...

Do you have a fear of failure? Do you stay within your comfort zone, even when you are setting goals for yourself? If you never stretch yourself outside of your comfort zone, you'll never find out just how much you are capable of accomplishing.   You want to push yourself to go beyond the ceiling that you've created for yourself. When we were kids, we all had dreams and had at least an idea of wha...

What will your life look like ten years from now? An exceptional motivator is to envision your life in the future. Are you out of debt? Have you saved up enough money to be comfortable? Is your retirement savings on track?   While there are a lot of questions that you can ask yourself, the point of this exercise is to truly visualize where you are at financially speaking a decade from today, based...

I've got to earn some money in the next month or so, and I've identified just how I'll do it. That's half of the battle right there. It's pretty amazing what happens when you take a moment to not only identify a goal but to also identify the means whereby you'll be accomplishing said goal.   This whole process started (and I stumbled upon it) as I was updating my monthly budget. I decided to go in...

Do you care too much about what others are thinking? This can add a whole new level of complexity while you are trying to accomplish a goal, such as getting out of debt or any other goals that have to do with improving your personal financial situation.   This really comes down to human nature. We all want to be liked and accepted. When we come across resistance from others when we express our ide...

I've heard about the Pomodoro Technique before, but I have never actually looked into trying this until recently. I did several searches on Google, and I found a wealth of information on this topic. If there's one thing that I've learned over the last several years, it's that no matter how rich you are or how much wealth you have acquired, you can't purchase time. Time is not a commodity. It's not...